Tag Archive: hobby

Pursuing a hobby is always an unknown and oblivion act to enhance and develop one’s personality. We indulge in a hobby that represents our personality. People on the softer side choose music, dance or painting as a hobby. People with an adventurous instinct choose wild hobbies like mountaineering, underwater diving and so on. Similarly people enjoying heritage or who like exchanging and networking involve in collectibles.

Sometimes people deliberately choose a hobby to communicate about their likes and dislikes, about their personality and about their choices.

Why should I pursue a hobby?

Stress-buster: For those who engage in busy careers, pursuing hobby becomes important. To vent out their emotions and set aside a space for themselves, people indulge in a hobby. Some such stress busters are cooking, pottery, bird watching, swimming, etc.

Instills a sense of appreciation: When we immerse ourselves in gaining a skill set, it involves practice. With practice, we hone our skills to pursue our favourite hobby more artistically. By involving in ardent practice, we can understand and empathize with another hobbyist and the effort it takes to deliver the same. Though this is a long process, people with a hobby instill in themselves a sense of appreciation.

knowledge enhancement: A hobby cannot always be pursued in solitude. It requires knowledge sharing and team work. When we start advancing and gain acumen pertaining to a hobby, we need more and more relevant information. For this we engage and network with other hobbyists. This allows knowledge enhancement.

Self change happens: Unknowingly as we progress in exploring a hobby, we change with the changing level of skills and obviously changing perception.

Self development: We develop our personality and the aura around us, which changes the world. Though this sounds spiritual and ethereal to hear, a person who has pursued a hobby sincerely for over 5 to 6 years would agree with this aspect of improvement.

Community help: A hobby has its own network and ecosystem due to which it exists among us. This existence helps a community in an indirect way. It provides employment and avocation to people who are unemployed and idle.

Costs you lesser than a penny and gives you a world of fun! Learning a new language has never been a more attractive choice than it is today. With the virtual world shrinking and more and more people associating themselves as global citizens, a trend fuelled by increasing travel, there has been a growing interest and curiosity to learn about more than one’s own culture.

It is a matter of pride to be multi-lingual and is a hot skill these days. It is helping many job seekers to land in a job easily, when combined with other regular skill sets. As learning a new or foreign language is widely touted to increase critical thinking skills, creativity, and flexibility.

But as a hobby too, learning a new language is an interesting proposition. With all the resources available on Internet, it renders itself as a beautiful and enjoyable journey that connects one to new cultures and help in becoming more eligible citizens of this new global society!

Here is a simple and effective plan that helps you get started on this neo-journey,

Decide on what language to learn. Preferably a language you are a little familiar with and want to become fluent, or a totally new foreign language to enjoy the fun of learning something completely novel.

Establish different stages for the whole learning experience – Initially, you may want to learn the language just to be able to understand movies and get a peek into that country’s culture. Later, you may want to be able to speak in that language with your friends or envision building a profession, or you may further want to become a language expert that requires you to read and write as well.

Look up on the internet and try to design a learning program that would help you make use of all the available resources. This may include, enrolling on websites that sends you a daily dose of learning or some animated exercises that lets you learn in an interactive way or finding a native speaker that can spend some time talking to you, be a part of forum where your learning is made more holistic.

When you start making progress with your learning, it is also a great idea to start using what you learn in your day-to-day conversations. This hobby is quite contagious and may soon land you up with some company from your own circle, bringing in that extra bit of fun!

India is an eventful country and that provides umpteen opportunities for teenagers and students to capitalize on their hobbies for pocket money. Some hobbies would fetch more than just pocket money. Those hobbies are listed here for students who are already pursuing them:

Design and Illustration: If you are good at digital design and illustrating ideas into figure forms, you will have loads of options to earn your money. Apart from design houses there are many corporate sector digital needs which could be a right fit for you to work with.

Photography: You can focus and have an eye for detail, photography suits you best. It is good to work under a professional before contracting assignments on your own.

Web designing: This is an extension to digital and graphic designing. Web designing involves programming, developing and designing. To pursue this, you will require a team to handle the scale as you grow.

Writing: There are very few, truly able professional writers who can actually sell a story to their audience. The corporate world has a dearth for good writers and they require people who can speak on behalf of a firm through their writing skills.

Event management: As mentioned in the beginning, in a eventful country like India, events always happen. There are a lot of resources to be gathered, deadlines to be achieved, processes to be monitored to host an event. In the urban areas, event management is a good part time avenue.

Tutoring: School children, hobby learners, skill learners require tutors in their areas of interest. If you are good in a subject matter and at tutoring, this hobby could fetch you a reasonable monthly income.

Cooking: This hobby need not be limited to your kitchen. You could spread the aroma by catering food to small parties and gatherings. This would help build your network and culinary skills.

Music: Like dancers, singers and instrumentalists are required for professional reasons. Singers have opportunities on radio, for advertisements, entertainment reasons and so on. Same is the case with instrumentalists.

Bridal make over: Weddings are on a high in India. Big fat wedding is a popular fad. With the country getting, we can see ostentatious weddings. This trend has provided opportunities for people who have make up as a hobby.

Why is it so important to pursue a hobby or keep your OTHER SIDE active? Have you watched the movie “Social Network“? One of the dialogues uttered by Mark is, “I don’t want to earn through advertisements. I don’t know what it is going to be. It could be the next big thing.” These words show that he didn’t adopt convention though it was well proven. He adopted passion.

This era’s new mantra now would be ‘Soft is BIG’. To make it big one needs to pursue their soft side, attend to their inner needs.

You could be a housewife, student, working professional or CLUELESS. No matter who you are, each one of us has another side that is yet to be discovered or already discovered.
Share what your other side is.
If you connect strongly with any of the hobbies posted on the blog or want to share something new, feel free to submit your other side in the comment box. Hobby Troops will surely connect with you to hear your other side.

Candles were used for religious and basic living needs. In the recent times, use of candle has been translated to decorative and festive purposes. Getting down to the heat of the hobby, candle making has developed as a little science in itself. Now a days, in the metropolitan cities we find a lot of children, teenagers and women exploring this hobby.

What is the basic infrastructure required for this hobby?

Do you have kitchen? Then you are ready for to try out this hobby. This requires you to take a lot of precautionary measures.

Apparatus required for candle making:

Paraffin wax

Bee’s wax

Aluminium tray

Blunt knife

Wicks

Molds

Wax colour

Designer cutters

Any other junk which could be used to hold wax for a candle

Wax scented oil (optional)

With these things you are ready to begin the hobby. Depending on the occasion you can create appropriate candles. Few to name are, tealights, votives, pillar candles, diyas, gel candles and so on.

Make this a hobby

To start with a lot of DIY kits are available in the market for beginners. As amateurs it is good to use them with the instruction sheet within the kit. The basic method to make a candle is to melt the wax, insert the wick in the right portion and pour the molten wax into the mold. This is not it for all types of candles. Each type will have a different procedure which will come onto this blog later.